


Patient, Conscious, Patience, Conscience

by rosetwopointoh



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, a sort of romance, but there's definitely more angst than romance, confused FemShep, future Garrus/FemShep, remembered Kaidan/FemShep, spoilers for ME1 and ME2, t for language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-13
Updated: 2014-01-13
Packaged: 2018-01-08 15:19:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1134217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosetwopointoh/pseuds/rosetwopointoh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Getting spaced has a way of really screwing you up, and getting brought back from the dead by a terrorist organization doesn't exactly help matters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Patient, Conscious, Patience, Conscience

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a line from Mumford & Sons' "I Will Wait":
> 
> _you forgave, and I won't forget_
> 
> I do not apologize for the rambly stream-of-consciousness, because really, what other state of mind could Shepard really be in?

Shepard was patient. So patient. She was patient with Rear Admiral Mikhailovich when he rubbed his nose in her business the first time she had Joker bring the Normandy back to the Citadel under her command, patient with the Council when they ignored the possibility of the Reaper threat. Patient with Liara when the woman nearly fainted, more than once, after seeing the Prothean nonsense rambling around in Shepard’s head. She was patient with Wrex, when the thought of destroying a cure for the genophage inspired a rage in him that bade Ashley to lift her pistol, though she was not so patient with the Gunnery Chief, after. Maybe that’s why Chief Williams—Ash—had sounded like she was begging Shepard to save him instead of her, to run to the AA tower and disable the gun and leave Ash behind with the bomb. Because Ashley had done the thing nobody else did and very nearly pushed Shepard one step too far.

And she was beyond patient with Garrus, upstart that he was, trying to jump the gun (sometimes literally) on this and that and habitually bulling through to get what he wanted—until the whole thing with Dr. Saleon, which Kaidan hadn’t witnessed, but Wrex had offered comment on. After that… even though the mad scientist was dead either way, it was suicide-by-Commander, not an execution, and Garrus had figured out the difference. He’d been resisting her tidal pull, the one that Williams had admired but avoided, the one that even Wrex had admitted was impressive, the one that Liara went silly over, that Tali set aside her Pilgrimage for—the one that Kaidan had never had a chance against, not since the first time his brown eyes met the emeralds in hers. Garrus had made out longer than most for them, but in the end, he was in it, too, firmly behind this paragon of _right_ in a galaxy going very, very wrong.

And hot damn, but when she Threw a Krogan Warlord into zero-G and finished him as he floated lazily with a shotgun blast, spun, leveled the weapon and Carnaged a _heavy turret_ into oblivion, then calmly picked off the one Geth trooper they’d missed among the slew of biotics and gunfire spewing from the tightly-knit squad without so much as a flickering shield… all while the Citadel shuddered and heaved and rolled and tried to expel Sovereign around them, there was a _reason_ she was the first.

Spectre, that is. Not that she was the first anything else. No. Not at all. Except, well, she was. In a lot of ways.

Right now he wasn’t going to think about the night before the relay. Because right now… right now he was in an escape pod, in a stuttering kind of shock that refused to acknowledge grief, because—of all things, after Saren, Sovereign, Saren again, Saren’s metal-skeleton-thing, watching her keep Wrex and Vakarian on her six, over and over (because she needed Kaidan on the Normandy; she needed someone she trusted to back up Joker—she had Tali for Engineer Adams and Liara for Chakwas and any other nonsense because the asari was very rarely flustered except for around Shepard herself, and Williams… Williams wasn’t Kaidan—and then there wasn’t Williams, anymore), what got her?

Space.

The final frontier.

Not geth, not a Reaper, not a rogue Spectre, not even something halfway possible like a Thresher Maw (though she was quite adept at avoiding those—just don’t bring up Akuze) or maybe even more probable like an Asari Matriarch gone more than slightly insane, powered by a crazy sentient ship with a propensity towards mass genocide, or a long-extinct damn-vicious species that she’d gone ahead and returned to the galaxy. Or pirates, or mercs, or any of the other hazards she pointed her gun at as a creature of habit.

She got fucking _spaced_.

Of all the things that could be ironic, this was probably the saddest.

And as the Normandy obliterated herself around the escape pods, as the woman he knew he loved was lost to the vastness that surrounded them, Kaidan Alenko thought, bitterly, that maybe at least there was a kind of poetry to it. She was born in space, lived all her life in space, and so to space she would go.

He’d have to remember to call her mother himself, for what little good it would do.

 

They’d been picked up by the closest friendly freighter, shuttled off to the closest Alliance frigate. Then they’d gone off to their own: Tali back to the Migrant Fleet, her Pilgrimage complete; Garrus, to C-Sec again, despite there being no real Citadel left to play security for; Liara, to an asari vessel, to help with where her mother had left off, or something; Wrex, to Tuchanka. Liara had offered an attempt at gentle condolence. Kaidan had tried to offer it to her, too. He hadn’t missed how the asari had watched the Commander in her grace.

Garrus had been the last to go, and before he did he’d knocked on the wall just inside the observation lounge-turned-hidey-hole. Kaidan had looked up at him and did his best not to seem overwhelmingly pathetic.

“She was special,” Garrus said, softly, the lilting hum below his voice sounding less like a hum and more like a dirge.

“I know.”

The turian’s mandibles flickered and he shifted, awkwardly, a small bag slung over his shoulder. “I… it’s not really for me to ask, but she seemed like more than that to you.”

Kaidan looked up to meet Garrus’s curious gaze. “Yeah.” The admission was quiet, tiny, and Garrus nodded, just slightly. “She was.”

“I’m sorry.”

Kaidan couldn’t respond. He nodded instead, swallowing against the tightness in his throat, the prickling behind his eyes. It hadn’t stopped, not since… well.

“You’re a good man, Alenko,” the turian continued. “No reason to like my kind, but you never blinked when you met me. Pain in the ass that I was.”

“Still are.” A corner of Kaidan’s mouth twitched.

Garrus’s mandibles fluttered again, in a less depressing manner, this time. “Thanks, I think.”

“Don’t stop, Garrus. She’d never let you get soft on her.”

Garrus’s voice had that sad hum back, again. “No, she wouldn’t. I won’t.” The turian put his hand on Kaidan’s shoulder, squeezing gently, the talons only pressing softly into Kaidan’s clothes. It was an unfamiliar gesture, clearly, but one he’d picked up from the humans around him, and Kaidan appreciated the effort. “Don’t forget who you are, either, Alenko.”

When Garrus left, the ship felt emptier, sadder.

 

When Kaidan made it back to the Citadel, to what had been rebuilt, Anderson called him to his office; the man went through layer upon layer of security before emerging into the Councilor’s domain. Anderson looked far too cheerful. “Alenko.”

“Captain.”

“Councilor, now, but Captain is better. I’m glad you’re here. How are you?”

Kaidan didn’t respond right away, instead swallowing, fighting expressions on his face, trying not to rip into the man for even _considering_ to ask that, and Anderson lifted his hand to stop him, his mask falling to expose the tightness of his eyes, the sallowness of his skin. “It’s alright, son. She didn’t serve under me for long and I don’t know how much of what happened out there was my being her CO or my just doing what _she_ thought was right—or if I even had a choice. I can’t imagine going through what you did while serving under her would do, Lieutenant. She was the best and brightest of us. Of any of us.”

Kaidan deliberately nudged away his reaction at Anderson’s mention of him _serving under_ her, because that was true on levels he very much hoped Anderson didn’t know about, before he spoke. “When a star goes out, Captain,” he said, quietly, “they don’t just die quietly.”

“They don’t, do they,” Anderson replied, turning to look out the viewport at the stars outside, obliquely gesturing for Kaidan to join him.

“No, sir.” Kaidan took a breath, stepping up to the port. “They go nova. They affect everything around them. Upset gravitational pulls, wipe away atmospheres, shift planetary orbits—change the galaxy itself.”

Anderson looked at Kaidan somewhat critically out of the corner of his eyes. “Drink, Alenko? We’re off-duty, here.”

Kaidan felt refusal in his belly, unable to trust himself just yet, and in respect for what Shepard would have had him do—go with his gut—he declined. “I feel a migraine coming on. I should go.”

Anderson nodded understanding. “I remember—your L2, right? Get some rest, Lieutenant.”

And so when Kaidan slumped onto his bunk, the effort of holding his chin up and back straight while swallowing tears indeed having brought a vicious headache out of the amp in the back of his neck, its claws snaking up the back of his skull to reach out and sink in just at his hairline, pulling, _pulling_ back, threatening to scalp him, he pressed a fist into his chest and murmured her name to himself, over and over, an aching lullaby, until he fell asleep.

Riley was safe enough. Shepard—Shepard was never safe to say again.

 

Then there was a time when Riley Shepard wasn’t patient, not anymore.

Not _a_ patient. She was up, on her feet, stumbling to a locker, fingers flicking haphazardly yet perfectly over unfamiliar clasps of armor, picking up a funny-feeling lump of metal off an enemy, only needing to look once to see where the thing— _thermal clip_ said the voice in her head—slid in and clicked home and warmed the pistol in her palms.

Without her it fired, she ran, stumbled, half-fell into cover, fired on metal things she didn’t recognize that were sorta shaped like people, and then there was another person there, talking to her. Not the woman’s voice in her head telling her what to do, the one that had broken up like static.

Two years, twelve days.

Meat and tubes. That’s all she’d been, after exposure to radical atmospheric pressures, subzero temperatures, and god-knows-what-else after a catastrophic suit failure in space. It had been two years, twelve days since her body had been burger meat and tubes and now she was in armor, holding a pistol, fiddling with this funny thing called a thermal clip in her pocket and sitting on a shuttle and feeling decidedly hollow because what else could you be but _whatthefuck I’m alive?_

And then there was something… _real_ in her chest, because she turned around after talking to the Illusive Man and it was Joker standing there, in reality, her reality at least, not a hologram, and then he took her to see the new Normandy and while that pain was still fresh, so fresh, too fresh to really comprehend just yet, it was a good kind of pain, like the lingering sting after ripping off an adhesive bandage. And Joker was there, a filmy touch of medi-gel, just enough to ease the worst of it.

Omega was a shithole, but so were lots of places in the galaxy. Finding Mordin was enough to get her joints oiled again, her body moving like it thought it was supposed to, handling weapons properly and getting the hang of these thermal clips. Then they passed themselves off as freelancers—hell, they nearly were, these days—and it went from easy enough to somewhat harder.

When a concussive round took out her shields on that damned bottleneck of a bridge while freelancers left and right fell with clean shots, the new wiring in her head twitched, trying to connect things. She knew that precision sniping. Had someone said Archangel was a turian?

And then they were behind him, and then it was… oh, it _was_ , it was Garrus! and it was her heart actually filling with blood again and beating a little stronger. And he _knew_ her. Knew she was Shepard. Knew she was a Spectre. Didn’t blink. Knew it as soon as he saw her on the bridge through the sights of his rifle, the N7 on her chest blazing pride. Of course he wouldn’t blink; to a sniper, blinking meant a target missed.

Then it was Purgatory, and boy if that wasn’t hell, hell in a prison ship, but after that, her biotics finally fully released, renewed from their dusting off, a crackling blue open space beside her where Liara used to be filled with the massive swath of rage and violence that was Jack, with Garrus on her six as always… yes. Yes, there was something there. Just like old times. Sniper who was just as good with an assault rifle at her back, a petite ball of blue flame by her side—one who was dead accurate with a shotgun or Carnifex. Yeah, this felt right.

Finding Okeer and returning with a tank of instant krogan super-soldier (just break glass), well, she’d never led a normal life, had she? She still hadn’t decided about whether to break the glass or not.

Then she was on Horizon, racing the clock and the Collectors, and despite knowing in her head that he would be there, the Illusive Man had told her after all, it wasn’t enough, even with as alive as she felt after downing Collector after Collector, husk after husk.

Her restarted heart tried to stop on her again; she went to pound her recreated chest, restart her breathing, but her remade arm froze on her.

_Kaidan._

_And I came home_  
 _Like a stone_  
 _And I fell heavy into your arms_  
 _These days of darkness_  
 _Which we've known_  
 _Will blow away with this new sun_

_And I'll kneel down_  
 _Wait for now_  
 _And I'll kneel down_  
 _Know my ground_

_And I will wait, I will wait for you_

You _loved_ me? she wanted to ask him.

I was _dead_ , she wanted to tell him. If I wasn’t I never would have left you. Can’t you understand that’s what it took?

But mostly it was _you loved me? You bastard, you never_ told _me_ and _here I am alone in a galaxy which is still going to hell, damn but if it didn’t go to hell and back and there_ again _and fuck it but_ I need you _._

_You said I made you feel human. You made me feel human, too._

There wasn’t any room in her throat to say _please, Kaidan, I need you please help me feel human again, because I don’t know that I am anymore._

She had his picture on her desk, even. She’d gone to some pains to get it without flat-out asking for it. But the printout taped to the wall was suddenly framed one day and she didn’t know whether to thank Kelly or just to add one more tally into Miranda’s “what the fuck?” box. There were already a lot of them.

She’d thought maybe, maybe he’d remember, if he’d just put his arms around her and he did and she felt like maybe, maybe she was remembering who she was.

But then he stepped away from her, and _looked_ at her, and realized that despite the N7 on her chest she wasn’t Alliance anymore, and he looked at her like she was… she was… not Shepard.

Commander Shepard was all she was, anymore. Not Riley. Just Commander, like she didn’t have a name, all title and hero and Spectre and… not herself.

“I don’t know who you are, anymore,” Kaidan—no, Alenko—said, softly, with finality, and something not-cybernetic in her mostly-metal body went colder than the rest of her.

_I don’t either._

_You forgave, and I won’t forget._

_I won’t forget, Shepard,_ she could hear him say.

_I won’t forget, either. Alenko._

The morose shuttle ride back she avoided Garrus’s steady, gentle gaze and Jack’s victory mania, wanting nothing more than to be alone.

 

_So break my step_  
 _And relent_  
 _You forgave and I won't forget_  
 _Know what we've seen_  
 _And him with less_  
 _Now in some way_  
 _Shake the excess_

 

Later, when Miranda and Jacob and the Illusive Man had had their varying ways with her and she was leaning her forehead against her forearm, braced against the not-so-soothing wall just outside the comm room, trying to center herself with the gentle thrum of the Normandy but finding it reminded her of everything _wrong_ , something that perhaps, maybe, was still a little bit _right_ stepped towards her and stopped, palpably uneasy.

“Shepard?” Garrus’s dual-toned voice asked, and she swallowed past the lump in her throat, forced herself to stand, attempted to give him her game face.

“What’s up?” She knew as soon as she looked at his expression, as damnably turian as it was, that there was no fooling him.

“Shepard.” Garrus lifted his hand, like he was going to set it on her shoulder, but it hovered awkwardly before falling, like he was afraid it was going to hurt her.

“I didn’t… why did he… I…” Shepard covered her mutinous mouth, hushing its babbling, and Garrus’s uninjured mandible fluttered in anxiety, maybe. When her eyes met his, he sighed and stepped closer, just slightly.

“He… he was devastated, Shepard. After. We all were, but… Some of us had put it together, me and Liara, at least, but I didn’t realize—"

“That he loved me? Yeah, me neither.” The words were spat with venom born of anguish and Garrus recognized a defeated anger he was pretty sure his commander typically only let out in solitude. _Well. This is new._

“You had to know showing up with a Cerberus ship and crew wasn’t going to—“

“For saving me, Cerberus has damn well fucked me over. You’re the only one who hasn’t thrown it in my face, Garrus.”

“I wouldn’t say that’s exactly true.”

Shepard’s eyes narrowed, just a touch, but it was enough. “You let me know you weren’t buying it unless I told you what you needed to hear. That’s all. You kept me straight, kept my conscience clear. You didn’t try to beat me over the head with it like a baseball bat.”

“Ah—baseball bat?”

Shepard’s eyes closed as her shoulders slumped. “Club, basically. Wood, traditionally. Metal, otherwise.”

“Oh.”

When Shepard opened her eyes again Garrus was standing close, very close, actually, given how far his armor swooped out to cover his breastbone. Shepard looked up at him—really looked—and had to look right at the sweeping scar that took up the side of his face under the bandage, now, fading his colony markings and making his mandible act sort of like a badly assembled model ship’s wing. Limp, only faintly responsive.

“Garrus, I’m so sorry.”

“About what? Oh, this?” He gestured vaguely at his face. “I’ll live. Some women like facial scars, anyway.”

“Your squad. All that time alone. If you were human I’d expect it to have given you gray hairs, lines on your face.”

“I don’t really mind being alone, Shepard.”

She noticed he didn’t say anything about his squad.

“It’s different when you have a choice, Garrus.” Shepard reached a hand up, aided her reach by rocking up onto her tiptoes. Garrus tilted forward and down, slightly, accommodating her slighter stature; she steadied herself with her other hand against his breastplate, fingertips reaching over the edge to his cowl. Gentle fingers traced the tentatively-healed marks; her mind flashed—

 _Garrus, sprawled lifelessly, unresponding, then suddenly gasping, breathing in slurps, bubbles coming out of places they shouldn’t, blue, so much blue, paint? from where? no—blood, turian blood is blue—she didn’t know where Garrus started and ended and where he laid leaked-out on the floor and that eye, fluttering under the visor, saying something turian she didn’t know but started with_ Shepard _or maybe_ please _—_

“Shepard?”

She felt the vibrations of his voice down her arm and took her hand away from his face, gently, and settled back on to her own feet. “Thanks, Garrus.”

He opened his mouth and looked like he was going to ask _for what?_ but then he knew and she knew he knew and he nodded instead. Then, he said, “You’re still you, Shepard.”

She snorted weakly. “I don’t know that I believe that.”

“Anderson knows, too. And Joker. You’re still our Shepard. It’s like old times, just closer to hell.”

He saw a little of Shepard’s old resolve come back, settling into the line of her shoulders. “You have my six, Garrus?”

“There and back, Shepard,” he said. “Just like old times.”

“And if we don’t come back?”

“You’ve done the impossible, Shepard, once or twice. You’ll do it again. What’s that saying you have? Third time’s the trinket?”

She was silent. He turned and left, slowly, glancing over his shoulder at her before he slipped through the hiss of the hatch.

The elevator droned as it carried her to her quarters, the sprawling expanse under the stars, and she fell backwards on to her bed. She hurt; there was always constant pain, dampened under sheer willpower, but there was a wrench in her chest, a new one, an emotional one. Not one she could solve with medi-gel or cybernetics.

Logic—and memories of her mother—told her she had to make a choice. Hold on to him or let him go? He’d been so… _cold_ with her—but it had been two years for him, she reminded herself. Longer. For her… it was only weeks, and only hours, in a way. She realized she’d been holding out hope for him since she’d awakened in a fog in a madly beeping medbay. He’d lost his a long time ago.

 _Let him go, doll,_ her mother’s voice told her, an echo floating in her head. _There are plenty more fish in the sea._

_So I'll be bold_  
 _As well as strong_  
 _And use my head alongside my heart_  
  
 _So tame my flesh_  
 _And fix my eyes  
_ _That tethered mind free from the lies_

 _But I'll kneel down_  
 _Wait for now_  
 _I'll kneel down  
_ _Know my ground_

 

Then there was an unread message at her terminal simply titled ‘About Horizon’ and there was an ache in the pit of her stomach to match it.

Do you remember that night, before Ilos? it said.

 _Of course I remember, dumbass,_ she thought, but it was without heat and full of sad-happy memory. Kaidan. Oh, Kaidan.

Someday… I don’t know. We’ll see, it said. Then—Kaidan. Just Kaidan. Not _love,_ not _best wishes_ or _stay safe_ or _goodbye_. Just… Kaidan.

She could live with that. Just Kaidan.

She switched off the terminal and went into the elevator and unerringly hit the button for the third level. It wasn’t until she was standing outside the main battery that she found herself smoothing her hands over the front of her black and white suit, supple and snug. It was different from the officer’s jacket-tunic-thing she’d been sporting. It made her feel a little more at home in the skin she was still trying to acclimate to.

The door slid open and Garrus looked over his shoulder at her and his good mandible twitched. Hello, she thought it meant; but maybe there was some subvocal subtext there that said Hel- _lo, Shep_ ard _._ More like Sheparrrrd. _God, save me from blue-eyed turian snipers._

Or was that something traitorous? _No. He’s spent the last two years letting me go. He deserves to let walking, talking ghosts lie._

“Garrus,” she said, quietly, and he turned to face her. 

“Commander,” he said. “Can it wait? I’m in the middle of some calibrations.”

He always said that. Damn the turian and his Thanix. “I… it can, Garrus, but...”

He looked at her, eyes clear, and his good mandible twitched again. “Alright. Shoot.”

“I don’t have my gun.”

He gave her a pointed look, one that said _right, Shepard, like I believe you don’t recognize your own damned idiom._

She smiled, hesitantly. He sighed. “What is it?”

“Garrus… I need your help.”

“You? Help?”

She stepped out of sight of the door and it slid closed. She hoped EDI wasn’t listening in, though she probably was.

“I don’t know who I am, Garrus,” she said, quietly. “Not anymore. The only things I have left are _Shepard_ and _Spectre_. And… you.”

“What about Joker?”

“I saved his life. That’s all.” _He’s not you. My favorite sniper._

“Com—“ She glared. “Shepard. I don’t know what I can do. Say.”

She hesitated a step closer; he had to bend, slightly, to meet her gaze. “My name works, for now.”

“Shepard?”

“Out there, yeah. Here…” She gestured to the room. “Can I just be Riley?" 

Garrus’s gaze went rigid, as if the thought of calling her by her _name_ pained him. It did, just not with the sort of pain you’d think.

“It’s my name, Garrus,” she said, so quietly, and he was glad she couldn’t hear the wild shifts in his subvocals. “But saying it to myself doesn’t remind me who I am. And EDI might tell Miranda I’ve gone crazy if she hears me talking to myself in the third person, anyway.”

He nodded, the tiniest incline of his head, really, willing to do this for her even though it felt so wrong-right—right? and said, “Riley.” He knew she had to hear the subvocals, with as wildly as they were trilling; he trusted that she couldn’t interpret them, because otherwise he was _screwed._

Her proud posture broke, her body bending like an overburdened branch, and Garrus reached out instinctively to catch her before she fell. She didn’t, wasn’t going to, wouldn’t have, but gripped his arm anyway like it was a lifeline.

 

 _Raise my hands_  
 _Paint my spirit gold_  
 _And bow my head  
_ _Keep my heart slow_

“Thank you,” she whispered hoarsely, eventually, and unbent her bowed spine, looking up to meet his eyes. Hers were full, damp, reddened, but not brimming with tears. _Guess I can’t really cry, anymore. Too much fake shit masquerading as real flesh. Meat and tubes._

She disappeared out of the main battery after a long silence and left Garrus wondering to his spirits what the _fuck_ had just happened.

  

Now all the words meant something different altogether.

**Author's Note:**

>  _And I came home_  
>  Like a stone   
> And I fell heavy into your arms 
> 
> These days of darkness  
> Which we've known   
> Will blow away with this new sun
> 
> I'll kneel down   
> Wait for now   
> And I'll kneel down   
> Know my ground  
> 
> And I will wait, I will wait for you  
> And I will wait, I will wait for you
> 
> So break my step   
> And relent   
> You forgave and I won't forget   
> Know what we've seen   
> And him with less   
> Now in some way   
> Shake the excess 
> 
> But I will wait, I will wait for you
> 
> So I'll be bold   
> As well as strong   
> And use my head alongside my heart   
> So tame my flesh   
> And fix my eyes   
> That tethered mind free from the lies  
> 
> But I'll kneel down  
> Wait for now  
> I'll kneel down  
> Know my ground
> 
> Raise my hands  
> Paint my spirit gold  
> And bow my head  
> Keep my heart slow
> 
> Cause I will wait, I will wait for you  
> And I will wait, I will wait for you


End file.
